Giveaway! Win a copy of “Beautiful You” by Rosie Molinary

I have to take a moment to brag about one of the most amazing people I know. Her name is Rosie Molinary, and aside from being whip-smart and funny, she’s a serious inspiration when it comes to empowering young women, feminism, and basically just inspiring everyone around her to live their best life.

As a radical self-acceptance champion, Rosie uses profound questions and wholehearted connection to empower people to treat themselves well so they can connect with their talents and passions to authentically and intentionally live their purpose and help heal the world. The author of Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self Acceptance and Hijas Americanas: Beauty, Body Image, and Growing Up Latina (both from Seal Press), Rosie teaches at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, serves as a national Dove Self-Esteem Project educator, offers workshops and retreats, and speaks on self-acceptance, body image, self-care, media literacy, the Latina experience, and intentional living around the country. Rosie also serves as a creative catalyst to companies and brands that wish to provide a synergistic, empowered, and soulful experience to their clients and employees as they serve the world through workshop and retreat facilitation and consultation.

A committed activist, Rosie helped found HAMMERS, a nonprofit initiative to provide emergency home repair for low-income families in her community, and Circle de Luz, a nonprofit that radically empowers young Latinas by supporting their transformation through extensive mentoring, holistic programming and scholarship funds for further education. (Full disclosure: I am a former board member and longtime donor to Circle de Luz.)

Today, I’m thrilled to be able to offer an excerpt from the second edition of Beautiful You, which was released today (yay!), and also a giveaway: One lucky Indigo + Canary reader will get a copy of the book! Read on for a daily dose of Rosie’s signature inspiration, and then enter to win at the end of the post. I’ll announce the winner on Monday, October 17. Good luck!

From Day 15 of Beautiful You: Consider What Self-Acceptance Can Add to Your Life

Imagine a line: a continuum from self-hate to self-love, with self-hate being the furthest point to the left and self-love being the furthest point to the right. I like to think of self-acceptance as neatly residing between them — a position of neutrality about the self — a place where one understands that she has worth and power and dignity simply because she exists. Worth does not need to be earned. It doesn’t have to be proven. It just is.

For some people, the concept of self-love is terribly uncomfortable for a litany of reasons: upbringing, faith, culture, ideas around language, etc. What they imagine it to be makes them self-conscious. So having self-love be the ideal destination feels inauthentic (to themselves) and, thus, they avoid it, choosing a relationship with the self that looks like the opposite of self-love, lest anyone think they are self-impressed or arrogant or anything else.

Let me be clear that I do not think that practicing and embracing self-love is being self-impressed or arrogant. Sometimes semantics can keep us away from a practice that might be good for us. Embracing self-acceptance can be a more accessible way to build a positive, healthy relationship with ourselves.

Imagine self-acceptance as a position of neutrality about the self, rooted in our decision not to have an adversarial relationship with our self. Your worth doesn’t have to be earned. You aren’t bad, ruined, imperfect. There is nothing fundamentally wrong about you. In fact, you are fundamentally right because you exist: because you, just like every other person, were put here on purpose. Worth, you see, is your birthright just as it is the birthright of everyone else. Ultimately, you chose to recognize your humanity just as you recognize and respect the humanity of others.

Today: Consider what self-acceptance would give you if you decided to embrace the practice in your life. How would your life be different? In what ways do you need to see the world as more abundant? How do you begin today?

What do you love most about Rosie’s message of self-acceptance? Share your answer in the comments — and make sure you get credit for your response, because it earns you two points in the giveaway!

9 Comments on Giveaway! Win a copy of “Beautiful You” by Rosie Molinary

I would go back in time ~7 years and tell myself the following in Rosie’s words: “You aren’t bad, ruined, imperfect. There is nothing fundamentally wrong about you. In fact, you are fundamentally right because you exist: because you, just like every other person, were put here on purpose.”

I love the concept of neutrality. While self-love is the ultimate goal, I think developing a cultivating a relationship with ourselves that is non-adversarial is an important step in that direction…and a challenging one!